Tuesday, 19 June 2018

Things to see in Wiscasset, Maine [Part 4]

Looking for things to do in Maine? You’ve come to the right place! Welcome to Part 4 of our blogseries, “What to do in Wiscasset”. This series will cover some of the best sights in the quaint,historic town of Wiscasset, Maine. You can learn more about (and take a tour of) each of theplaces described using the ‘Wiscasset’s Museum in the Streets’ mobile tour guide app availablefor Apple and Android.If you want to check out another blog in the series, click on Part 1, 2, 3,or 5.

Wawenock Block

Alexander Johnston, who handled the business side of his family’s large shipping business, designedand named this commercial building after a band of the Penobscots, Native Americans who lived inthis area before the first English settlements. Local builder Henry Bragdon completed the block inWiscasset 1858.

Downtown Stores

19th - early 20th century downtown Wiscasset, Maine provided for all your basic needs and more.In 1898, there were grocers, doctors, apothecaries, fancy and dry goods stores, hardware stores,dressmakers, hairdressers, a casket business, a shoe store, a telephone company, a telegraph office,an American Express office and several banks. By 1905, there was even a Billiard Hall!

R.H.T. Taylor

You are looking at what used to be R.H.T. Taylor’s store. Richard Hawley Tucker Taylor was one of14 children of James and Harriet Taylor. James was an English mariner who immigrated to the UnitedStates. He named his son after his employer, Captain Richard H. Tucker, Sr. When James Taylor fell onhard times in the early 1840s, Tucker and his wife Mary took the elder Taylor children into their homeand sent them to school when their father could not afford to do so.

Wiscasset, Waterville & Farmington Railway

Nineteenth-century America’s industrial revolution could not have taken place without the railroads.In Maine, railroads were the only way to transport the huge amounts of lumber, coal and agriculturalproducts that were our economy. The Wiscasset, Waterville & Farmington Railroad had been inbusiness about ten years when Carson Peck, vice president of F.W. Woolworth Co., bought thestruggling railroad in 1907. He modified the name, paid off all the debts and invested new capitalinto the business. Soon, the WW&F Railway had 90 freight cars, 6 passenger cars and 7 engines.

Hesper & Luther Little

The two schooners that were for many years an iconic image of Wiscasset were neither built herenor sailed from here.

Richard III

In 1859, Captain Richard H. Tucker, Sr. named his latest ship after his new grandson, Richard H. Tucker,III, the firstborn son of Mollie and Captain Richard H. Tucker, Jr. Built in Portsmouth, NH, the new shipwas 175 feet long with three masts and twenty sails. Her hull was painted black and olive green.

Of course, these are only a few of the sites you can see in Wiscasset, Maine.To read the previous blog, click here; to read the next blog click here.